Concerning the method of manufacturing a plane coil to be formed on an IC card, various methods are known. Examples of these methods are: a method in which a plane coil is formed in such a manner that a covered wire, which is covered with electrically insulating material, is wound so as to form the plane coil; a method in which a surface of a resin film is covered with a layer of metallic foil by means of sputtering, and then the layer of metallic foil is etched so as to form a plane coil; and a method in which a metallic sheet is subjected to punching so as to form a plane coil as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 6-310324.
FIG. 11 is a view showing an example of the arrangement of an IC card in which the semiconductor element 102 is mounted on the plane coil 100. As shown in the drawing, the plane coil 100 is composed in such a manner that the conductor is wound on a face so that it cannot cross itself and the terminals 100a, 100b of the plane coil 100 are electrically connected with the electrodes of the semiconductor element 102. Concerning the method of connecting the semiconductor element 102 with the plane coil 100, the following methods can be provided. One of the methods is that the conductor of the plane coil 100 is put on the semiconductor element 102 as shown in FIG. 11 and the terminals 100a, 100b of the plane coil 100 are connected to the electrodes of the semiconductor element. The other method is that the terminals 100a, 100b of the plane coil 100 are drawn out to the inside or the outside of the plane coil, and the semiconductor element 102 is connected to the ends of the terminals 100a, 100b which have been drawn out.
However, as shown in FIG. 11, when the semiconductor element 102 is arranged in such a manner that it is put on the plane coil 100, the thickness of the IC card is increased to a value corresponding to a total of the thickness of the plane coil 100 and the thickness of the semiconductor element 102. Since the thickness is increased as described above, problems may be caused in the case where the thickness of the IC card must be restricted. Further, in order to connect the terminals 100a, 100b of the plane coil 100 to the electrodes of the semiconductor element 102 as they are, a distance between the electrodes of the semiconductor element 102 must be larger than the arrangement width of the plane coil 100. Accordingly, in the case of a semiconductor element 102, the size of which is smaller than the arrangement width of the plane coil 100, it is impossible to adopt such an arrangement as shown in FIG. 11.
In this connection, in some cases, a chip module is used instead of the semiconductor element 102, and the terminals 100a, 100b of the plane coil 100 are connected to the electrodes of the chip module. In this case, the same problem may occur.
On the other hand, in the case where the terminals 100a, 100b of the plane coil 100 are arranged inside or outside of the plane coil 100, it is necessary to bend end portions of the plane coil so that they can cross the plane coil 100. Accordingly, the manufacturing process of the plane coil 100 would become complicated.